THE. NE.W YORKER wearing black double-knIt slacks with white stitching and a print sports shirt that he had unhuttoned to re- veal quite a hairy chest, took our thumh in a "pow- er grip" and shook our hand. "\Vhat we're all about is just being Beat]es fans," he explained. "Ev- eryhody here is a Beatles fan. \Ve Just want th s to he d happening. We're not thinking ahout box-office receipts. The offshoot of this might include d film documentarv of the Beatle- fest. Really, like the skv's the limit. I'm in charge of-you know-operatIons. I'm jU';t concerned that people have a good time. I'm not thinking about our b " ox. "Look} Mal" ( $Þ '<, E VEL KNIEVEL'S Snake River Canyon para- chute jump on September 8th was part of our experi- ence for two whole weeks, off and on. What a com- plex act! It had so manv uses. It began on August 30th, on a rain-lashed street in Queens, when a cahbie asked us, "How do you like Evel's chances?" He want- ed to change the subject, because he had juSt turned down the wrong street. On September 4th, Rep- resentative John N. Murphy, Demo- crat, of lower Manhattan and Staten Island, locked in a tight primary strug- gle with former City Environmental Protection .LL\.dministrator Jerome Kretchmer, got three paragraphs in the P ust hy putting out a press release an- nouncing that he had written a letter to the Federal Communications Com- mission to say that the jump might have a had infl uence on the nation's chil- dren. On September 7th, an hour be- fore midnight, a man appeared at the northeast corner of West Fourth Street and SIxth Avenue selling homemade cotton handkerchIefs lahelled "Evil Knievel" for a dollar. On Septemher 11 th, Bill Gallo's daily sports cartoon in the N e1.VS showed an unnamed rock- et dropping toward a river-labelled "Pennant"-while another rocket, named "Yanks," arced over the river trailing four little white clouds of snloke. .l\.. baIloon comIng from "Yanks" s'lid, "Look, Ma-No Chute Bu tton !" The caption on the cartoon -., \ \. " ^ î t.f i- t J J . Â-' .,. "'-;; r .- T t' f ^ I S'. ./ / . > f ,. \;. ,.,$ ^ . " , 1"1 - ... / 4t iÞ . ,< . ^" ÿ /" '" w ;J .... "-"""'.N"'^ - .........Ao>.. .' .'\ ,\1\ 31 1 #" 4- .,... ..a ,,", f- .. .. %. Vi f t: . """ .r 1 f .;-* "í - 'W- 17- ," ..... :!IIio:' -')v.. -.; j " ,\ ':'$ '\\< 11 "' .... , - '>. ,.,4 "'" " _ f )-" .... ' , #> ! t>",:-:'. . 1. " %- ;.; ^ .. -m" ...0 ((JiT/jzat)s dzsgusting- today) dear?)) . was "Goin' for Broke." And on Sep- tember 12th Hughes Rudd told us on the "C. B.S. Morning News" that the six-million-dollar check given to Evel hy the promoters before the jump had heen just a gag. He actudlly got only two hundred and fifty thousand dol- lars. \Ve watched the jump itself on one of four not-so-terrihly large closed-ci r- cuit color- TV screens at Madison Square Garden. TIckets in our section cost twelve-fifty apiece. The color on our screen was highly green. The screen on our left, which we could See one-tenth of, had hetter color. The screen on our right kept gOIng dead. The sound sounded as if it were com- ing through a snorkel. The hroadcast included as guest commentators I)avid Frost, Lee Arthur (cl female sports- caster from Plttshurgh ), and the aStro- nau t Jim Lovell. The Garden looked to be ahout one-fifth full. "The most exciting thing that happened was when a fellow in front of us got mad at a fellow sitting next to him. Other things that hclppened were: the Butte, Mon- . tana, HIgh Schoo] Band played the Nation'll Anthem. The rocket took off alnidst cheers. The rocket descended amidst total silence. The rocket dis- appeared from sight, hecause none of the closed-circuit TV cameras wele trained on the place where the rock- et actuallJ landed. It was then that the fello\\T in front of us got n1ad. rhe man on his left got cÀ.cited and yelled, "\Vhere the hell is Evel?" So he got excited hack and pointed at the woman on his right and yelled, "Watch your language, huh; How would you like it if your wife was sitting next to you?" The woman said, "Robert, please! " Then E vel emel ged unscathed, and the three of them cheered, along with everybody else. \Ve brought along our own guest commentator-our fnend Guy Alland, of the Knowhow "V\Torkshop, who is putting together a course in auto me- chanics and is also a motorcycle freak. His comments were that in reality it isn't so difficult to fire a rocket a rnile these ddYs and then bring it hack to earth safely. After all, even the cars in